The Princess and the Dragon
by Dragon-Sigma
Summary: She was hunting firelilies when she found the dragon.
1. Chapter 1

**So the recent Q&amp;A confirmed my theory that Druk was the golden egg in The Firebending Masters. My initial idea for how Zuko got him was that either he visited the Sun Warriors and was given the baby or the baby wanted to go with him, or that Ran and Shaw showed up at some point and gave him to Zuko. But this was too cute to pass up!**

**~o~**

She was hunting firelilies when she found the dragon, exploring out beyond the palace walls and her tutors' watchful eyes. This part of the gardens had been left to grow wild since before she was born, and had grown over with weeds and thorns— the perfect place for a little princess tired of boring teachers and courtly graces to go adventuring.

She knew there were treasures to be found out here. That morning, while she sat in her calligraphy lesson listening to the scribe, a stuffy old man who had taught the royal children for as long as anyone could remember, drone on and on about proper form and technique, one of the servant boys had come running in with an armful of wildflowers picked from the old gardens. He'd knocked the writing table in his haste to give them to her, upsetting the ink pot and ruining both her clothes and the poem she'd been copying. Despite the mess, she had not-so-secretly been glad of the interruption, as it meant the early end of the lesson. Her instructor, on the other hand, had wanted the boy beaten, but Father had talked him out of it.

After changing out of her ink-stained robes, she had suddenly found herself with a morning free of lessons, and ample time for an expedition. The flowers the boy brought had been beautiful, if a bit crushed, and so she hoped she could find a firelily to give Mother when she returned from her trip.

Not wanting to upset the Palace staff by returning in dirty and torn clothes, she had put on her oldest training outfit before sneaking past the groundskeepers and climbing the wall into the abandoned garden. She'd wandered for a while, crawling under bushes and peeking behind branches, but she hadn't found any flowers yet, only vines and rusting tools.

And then she found the dragon.

The bush was smoking, which was strange enough, and when she pulled aside the branches, she saw the little dragon struggling there in the mud, bits of leaf stuck under its red scales and its wings snagged on the thorns. When it saw her, the dragon spat a smoky gout of flame and redoubled its thrashing, only succeeding in becoming even more tangled in the thornbush.

"Shh, stay still," she told it, reaching out tentatively to touch the snared wings. "You're going to hurt yourself. I can free you if you stop moving."

The dragon growled and reached out its long neck to snap at the air right in front of her face. When she didn't flinch, it huffed a breath of steam, then stopped struggling and fell limp, allowing her to work at the tangled mess of thorns.

She pulled the last springy branch gently away from the trapped wing and the dragon tumbled out into her arms. She picked the debris from its scales and stroked them smooth, and by the time she was done, the dragon was asleep in her arms, its tail wrapped around her arm and its head resting on her shoulder, breathing contented streamers of smoke from its snout.

She stared in wonder at the creature. Her father and great-uncle had seen dragons once, she knew, but from their stories, she didn't think those had been like this one. This little dragon was barely the size of the sleepy cats that wandered the palace, begging fish scraps from the kitchens and lying content in sunbeams on the roof. There weren't many left in the world, making this baby even more important. She had been told that the world had been changing since before her birth, and maybe this was another sign of good things to come.

Careful not to disturb it, she carried the sleeping dragon back into the palace, taking a circuitous route through the royal residence to avoid the bustle of ministers and staff in the main palace. She thought briefly of keeping the dragon a secret and sending a letter off to Uncle Iroh in Ba Sing Se asking for advice, but then she thought of her lessons with the Fire Sages. Keeping an auspicious omen hidden could do no good.

She eventually found Father in the library, poring over some chronicle or another with Master Chien, the court historian. They both turned as she entered the room. And stared. After a few moments of shocked silence, Master Chien broke into a series of questions. How did she find the dragon? Were there others? Had she seen or spoken with a spirit?

The dragon in her arms had raised its head at the noise, and seeing Father, began to sniff curiously at him. Father waved Chien silent and stepped towards it. The dragon hissed and curled tighter around her, hooking tiny claws into her clothes and tangling its long tail in her hair. Father stepped back, and the dragon calmed again.

She was in the middle of recounting her adventure when two servants arrived at the door to announce the afternoon meal. They were rarely surprised by anything, even the sight of their Princess with an armful of sleeping dragon. Father dismissed Master Chien, who left for his own meal, and then requested two bowls of the day's chicken-duck soup and a dish of meat for the dragon to be brought to a sitting room in the royal residence.

The dragon hardly stirred as she carried it down the corridor, only waking again at the scent of the spiced meat when the food was brought. It wouldn't take food from Father, so she took on the job of feeding it bits and pieces from the plate, and would have let her soup get cold if Father hadn't reminded her to eat as well.

Eventually, the dragon had eaten as much as it could, and fell asleep again, draped across her lap, making a noise that could only be described as purring.

Her father watched it, shaking his head in wonder at the little creature. He'd have to talk to the Fire Sages, she realized. She hoped they would let her play with the dragon sometimes. Rare mystical animal or not, she thought it would get lonely if they tried to keep it safe in one place.

But whatever happened next, this was the greatest of good omens. A sign of prosperity for their dynasty, for their world, and for their family.

~o~

**More to come!**


	2. Chapter 2

The history master at first protested having to teach his charge while a small dragon curled himself around her shoulders, but when it became clear the two could not be separated, he had no other choice. When he took his argument to Father, the only response was that it couldn't hurt to have educated dragons as well as educated daughters, and no more was said on the matter after that. He could find no fault, at least, in Izumi's renewed attention to her lessons.

At Father's request, one of the Fire Sages came to the palace to teach a lecture on dragons, and Izumi hung on her every word. Afterward, she spent days curled up in the library with the old books of folklore the Sage had brought with her from the archives.

She found a name in one of these books, and Druk seemed to appreciate it. When he wasn't sleeping in his basket by the hearth in her room, he followed at her feet around the palace. He was forbidden to fly within the palace walls after an unfortunate incident involving a broken vase and flaming wall hangings. The servants still tutted at the damage his talons caused, but claw-marked floors were preferable to burned furniture.

The few texts that could be found on the growth of dragons all indicated that it would take years for Druk to reach his full growth, and so despite the fact that he had nearly doubled in size since Izumi had found him, it would be a long time before he became too big to stay inside.

Mother suggested, not entirely in jest, that she use the growing dragon to scare away some of the court's more unlikable councilors and petitioners. Izumi, outraged, exclaimed that, no, he was a _nice_ dragon, and nice dragons didn't go around scaring people, even if they were selfish and rude.

This, however, didn't stop Izumi from returning one day with the visiting Earth minister's little daughter huddled against her side and Druk hovering protectively over their heads, hissing steam. When Mother stepped outside and found the gang of noble boys in a frightened huddle against the wall, Izumi explained, in perfect innocence, that they had been teasing the girl.

While Mother was amused at the situation, Father disapproved, or at least he tried to appear that way. Izumi was told firmly that she was not to attack or threaten people simply because she didn't like them. But he made sure also to tell the boys' families of their actions, and they were not pleased to hear about their sons' behavior from the Firelord himself.

While the dragon and the girl were able to get away with that questionable rescue, other acts of mischief were not treated with the same leniency. It was rare that they acted out, as Izumi had an unusually strong sense of proper behavior for a girl so young, but her games with the growing dragon soon grew disruptive, and Father's patience wore thin. After a chasing game led to Druk knocking a young guardsman off a wall, Father decided enough was enough. The guard had broken his leg in the fall, and although that was quickly tended to and his anger soon crumbled in the face of Izumi's tearful apologies, his captain had already convinced the Firelord that having a young dragon running free around the palace grounds was far too dangerous. And so Druk was confined to the courtyard garden, and Izumi only allowed to be with him if she was sitting and reading quietly- games with the dragon were forbidden.

Izumi did spend a lot of time studying with the dragon draped over her lap, but she didn't give up her other games. She still ran through the gardens, picking flowers and mock-fighting with the noble boys. And then the assassin arrived.

Later investigation, carried out under the supervision of an irate Firelord and terrifying Princess Mai, would show that they were part of a splinter group loyal not to Ozai but to Earth Kingdom loyalists from Republic City, angry at the loss of what had once been Earth lands.

They came in the guise of soldiers, attacking and replacing guards at the Palace walls. Izumi, out into the gardens chasing a dragon-shaped kite, noticed nothing, until a very real dragon came rushing through the inside gates to coil himself protectively around her and strike down the impostors in a burst of flame.

The next few hours were very busy, full of her parents' fearful voices as they argued over the safest place to put her while the guards hunted down the rest of the assassins. This turns out to be in the courtyard with Druk at her side and her mother keeping watch, where she curled up against the dragon with a book of stories, after watching the guards running back and forth proved to not be as interesting as she would have expected.

She was nearly done with the book when Father walked into the courtyard and announced that Druk was no longer banned from the palace grounds. She jumped up and grabbed him in as big a hug as a little girl can give. He looked to Druk as if he expected the dragon to dislike him for separating the two, but Druk has only affectionate nuzzles to answer.

From that day on, it was impossible to deny that Druk was a part of the family.


End file.
